User talk:FlagFreak
Archive 2007-2008 Vote on a new VexiWiki flag! Hello, FlagFreak! Since there is a design being considered at Forum:New logo and flag, it would help if you would cast your vote, to reject or adopt a new VexiWiki flag! Thank you. 17:39, 1 January 2009 (UTC) Vector logo Hi. I have uploaded a distorted version of the Swirl flag that could be used as VexiWiki logo. I don't insist on anything, but I believe, the logo should be in vector form. — Hellerick 20:35, 1 January 2009 (UTC) Changing all VexiWiki flags You've probably realised this by now, but you also need to change the featured article image to the new flag for VexiWiki and the favicon. 09:44, 2 January 2009 (UTC) Proportions of VexiWiki flag How in the world did you work out that the proportions of the VexiWiki flag were that???? 09:49, 2 January 2009 (UTC) :2126:3721?! Actually when I was designing the flag I meant the proportions to be 4:7 — Hellerick 11:38, 2 January 2009 (UTC) Wow! Wow! The logo has actually been changed! That was great fun! What do you want me to help out with next? 09:53, 2 January 2009 (UTC) Logo The new logo isn't actually coming up on the left of the page, in the logo space. Why not? Is it coming up on your screen? Yesterday I thought that it was because it hadn't had 24 hours to take place. 08:20, 3 January 2009 (UTC) :::The logo still isn't coming up in the top left space. 08:47, 4 January 2009 (UTC) :::::I have tried refreshing the page, and clicked several differnt links to it (on my favourites, google search, wikia), but the old logo still comes up on my screen... Oh well, if it comes up on yours that's good. 20:36, 4 January 2009 (UTC) Helping out Oh that's fine :) Glad to be of help. Er... you should to able to guess what's coming now... What's next? 08:20, 3 January 2009 (UTC) Flag of Bangladesh I have uploaded Image:Flag of Bangladesh.svg, which needs to be deleted, having been replaced by Image:Bangladesh.svg. Thanks! 08:52, 3 January 2009 (UTC) ::Could you also delete Category:Proportions 10-6 for me please? 10:34, 3 January 2009 (UTC) Red links My personal opinion (which I probably have said before) is that the red links rule is a good rule; but that the red links in the "Asia" template (or whatever template there is at the bottom) shouldn't count as they aren't really in the article proper; but I do see what you mean about the red links; they do mess up the page a bit! 08:45, 4 January 2009 (UTC) Plagiarism If you like I'll avoid direct borrowings from Wikipedia, but to tell the truth I don't know why I should be doing this. I believe Wikipedia itself was created by "plagiarists", and its main purpose is to be further plagiarized. BTW, I think it would be a good idea to make a page with vexillological links, that would provide URLs of sites with sources of flag information (potentional plagiarism victims :-) ), flag discussions etc. BTW#2. I see the V-flag instead of the Swirl flag on the left of the page too. — Hellerick 10:13, 6 January 2009 (UTC) Our very own little "Congo Crisis" I responded to that at the Congo talk page: Talk:Congo. --Karsten vK (talk) 15:16, 11 January 2009 (UTC) VexiWiki:Test wall EUnations template I have copied the code from Template:EUnations and pasted them into VexiWiki:Test wall, and then added the image of the flag (20px) next to the name of each country. What do you think? Any good, or not? 13:41, 13 January 2009 (UTC) Browser bugs I kinda doubt that the templates were intended to look like this (a screenshot from Mozilla Firefox): — Hellerick 17:21, 13 January 2009 (UTC) FlagBox and links Maybe we should include links to the FOTW and Wikipedia into the FlagBox template? Similar to how links to the IMDB are included into the movie templates at Wikipedia. — Hellerick 19:47, 14 January 2009 (UTC) Plagiarizing Uganda The article was not written by me, all I did was uploading the missing pictures. — Hellerick 03:22, 16 January 2009 (UTC) EU Template I am afraid the template looks like a field chaotically filled with flags and names. Their order is not obvious, and when the font is large Some names get split from the flags. Not to mention that presence of Kosovo, and the names of Macedonia and Ireland makes it offensive. — Hellerick 09:21, 16 January 2009 (UTC) ::It looks quite nice over here actually, but if many people have that problem I guess it'll have to be amended. On Kosovo; I have raised the issue before if I recall correctly and to me the problem is not so much the fact that Kosovo is present but that Transnistria is missing. When objectively looking at the rules international customary law sets to statehood (I'm referring to the Montevideo convention) one would see that both of them qualify to be called states, and for that reason should be included in the template (which also applies to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Abkhazia and South Ossetia by the way). I have no objections against using the names "Ireland" and "Macedonia" for the countries commonly known by these names. In Macedonia's case calling it "FYROM" or "Republic of Macedonia" is also bound to be at least equally offensive to some; so I think that using the short form mostly used would be most convenient here. --Karsten vK (talk) 09:46, 16 January 2009 (UTC) I see the above, which looks fine to me. Macedonia is what 99% of people know it as and putting FYROM would mean nothing - unless you live in Macedonia. Ireland is also what most people know it as. With Kosovo I don't know. I don't think you would object to using Brazil's name, even though Brazilians call it "Brasil". In fact, most countries are called something different to the residents of the country to what they are known by people outside, e.g. Germany, Netherlands, Ivory Coast, Brazil, and Ireland to name but a few. We can't try to include all of these. However, if it is a big problem, one suggestion would be to put "Macedonia/FYROM" and "Ireland/Eire" instead. 10:49, 16 January 2009 (UTC) First of all I don't care whether you have objections, it is not about you or me, it's about millions of other people who are never going to visit this site, and yet their opinion should be respected. Of course it is not possible to not offend everyone, some people would be outraged to see China and Israel, but it does not mean that we should not even try. I don't think it would not be that difficult to use italics for entities like Kosovo (with an appropriate note bellow), and adding words like "Republic of" and "FYRO" — it does not create any troubles and saves the nerve cells. On the other hand I think it would make sense to include non-sovereign entities like the Faroes Islands and Gibraltar. And if you like table-like templates, you should arrange them in columns, not rows — with every column being alphabetically ordered — Hellerick 11:46, 16 January 2009 (UTC) BTW, what are the boundaries of Europe? The nations of the Caucasus would like to be included too, you know — Hellerick 11:54, 16 January 2009 (UTC) Umm... the boundaries of Europe are very complicated, I should think that we should use Wikipedia's template; you can see it here. This template uses "Macedonia", "Kosovo" and "Ireland". Also, if you are going to have "Republic of Macedonia", then do you propose to put Kingdom of Spain, French Republic, Principality of Liechtenstein, State of the Vatican City, Swiss Confederation, and even Most Serene Republic of San Marino? I don't think we want this, and it would mess up the template. 13:04, 16 January 2009 (UTC) And here it has Kosovo within "Dependencies, autonomies, other territories" section. Not to mention that it has Kazakhstan as well. And no, I don't mean to use words like "Republic" everywhere, but only when clarifying is necessary. Like "FYRO Macedonia" (to avoid confusion with Greek Macedonia, but alphabetically arranged as "Macedonia") and "Republic of Ireland" (to make it obvious that the Northern Ireland should be searched in another entry). — Hellerick 14:26, 16 January 2009 (UTC) Having now researched Macedonia I think that putting "Republic of Macedonia" would be OK, but I think that a for the actual page would be good. However, Kosovo should be Kosovo, or you can put (partially recognised) or some such. I think in Ireland's case it should be "Ireland", with maybe the four nations of the UK in small under the UK? (England, Wales, Scotland and Northen Ireland. I would defintely keep Ireland as Ireland and Kosovo as Kosovo though. 17:00, 16 January 2009 (UTC) ::Seriously, if any name for Macedonia is insulting for the Macedonians it's this FYROM name. The fact that some people in Greece might be outraged to see the country named by the name it actually uses itself seems less relevant to me than the fact that the country is known as Macedonia locally. Calling the country "Republic of Macedonia" won't take away their annoyance and FYROM is about as humiliating a name as one can imaging; I'd just go for "Macedonia", I can live with "Republic of Macedonia" but "FYROM" is a definite no (and by the way: Could you please just respond to my arguments and not to my way of phrasing them; the latter being absolutely irrelevant). ::The Caucasus nations are by my definition part of Europe and I had inserted them previously. Italics as a solution for partially or non-recognised states seems like a fine solution to me. --Karsten vK (talk) 17:09, 16 January 2009 (UTC) :::I guess it is not necessary to include entities like England and Scotland, because they are perfectly covered with the term "The United Kingdom". But Gibraltar, and the Isle of Man are quite different story. Obviously they are part of Europe, but they are not represented in the template. :::I never said anything about "FYROM", I propose "FYRO Macedonia", or even "Macedonia, FYRO". Is it insulting? For some people it is I guess, but that's their UN-accepted name after all. I must confess that it's kind of personal matter for me. I had pleasure to talk to some guys from FYROMia, and they sincerely claimed that it was they who conquered Greece, Egypt, Persia, and India; and that their language is one of three featured on the Rosetta stone. That's why I wholeheartedly support Greece in the issue. Calling that country "Macedonia" means to support madness. :::About italics: obviously it is not possible to create a simple list of the European nations without providing some notes about their status. The problem is I know a guy who would flagFreak out about it. — Hellerick 17:49, 16 January 2009 (UTC) ::::I'd personally have to agree with you that if I'd have been in charge I'd probably called the country Vardar or something, and that "Macedonia" doesn't historically make any sense. I however also think that it is highly insulting to deny a country the right to decide on its own name and pass that right on to the country that happens to be its southern neighbour; supporting madness? Perhaps, but if madness is in charge in Macedonia vexillologists are not the ones to judge them for it and whether we agree with it or not we should just accept it. If we are going to take a political stance we're definitely on a slippery slope. ::::When I was reading works of several Greek scholars for my paper on Cyprus I came across enough ultra-nationalist madness there as well (admittedly, the same applied to Turkish authors). I'm more tempted to call these nationalist and irredentist tendencies a general problem of the Balkans, not an exclusively Macedonian problem, and for that reason don't think Macedonia should be exclusively blamed for it. ::::Having England and such separated on the list wouldn't carry my support; especially considering the fact that the UK is not even a federation. But even if it would have been I still think that federal countries should be treated the way they judicially are: one country. ::::On the entities that were previously known as "colonies" and now go by lots of fancy names; I'd agree with those being added to the template, albeit separated from the actual independent countries. --Karsten vK (talk) 18:15, 16 January 2009 (UTC) So what's the consensus of all this? I think I list it here: *to leave Ireland alone *to add some sort of footnote for Kosovo *and to a) put Macedonia as "Republic of Macedonia" or b) leave it as it is. We have to decide which one for Macedonia. 08:12, 17 January 2009 (UTC) VexiWiki Logo The flag at the upper left corner looks too primitive. Try to draw something based on this picture. — Hellerick 07:15, 18 January 2009 (UTC) Removing files Could you remove the next files, please? * User:Hellerick/UseNavbox * Template:Navbox Thanks, — Hellerick 10:13, 19 January 2009 (UTC) The Template:Federal subjects of Russia is not used anymore and may be removed. — Hellerick 16:21, 22 January 2009 (UTC) Names of the Russian regions Mr. FlagFreak, I would appreciate it, if you'd ask me first, before committing something like mass renaming of the Russian regions. You renamed them after their capital cities, but many of these cities have flags of their own. E.g. you failed to rename Krasnoyarskiy Kray, because I already uploaded the flag of Krasnoyarsk (the city). Where I'm supposed to upload the capitals of other Russian regions? The English names of the Russian regions are a nightmare: you hardly can find two sources listing them in the same manner; there are to many systems, and none of them is perfect. That's why I attempted to give them "correct names": the names listed in the Consitution of Russia transliterated according to BGN/PCGN romanisation system, as they are used by the US Board on Geographic Names. Such method is preferred in many geographic sources, including Google Earth. I've made few exceptions though: the word avtonomnyy is not transliterated but translated: "autonomous", the names of the autonomous republics are given their "natural" names — it would be weird to have "Chechenskaya Respublika" instead of "Chechnya". The trouble is, sometimes it's difficult to determine what the natural name is. The names of the Russian regions usually consist of two parts: a "geographic" adjective, and a "status" term (kray, oblast, autonomous okrug). Both parts are necessary, you can't drop a "status" term. Names like "Penzenskaya Oblast" never are used without the word "Oblast"; "Penzenskaya Oblast" is not an official name of the region, it's the only name Russians use. Sometimes we have single-word noun terms for Russian regions (Podmoskovye for Moskovskaya Oblast, "Kamchatka" for Kamchatskiy Kray, "Bryanshchina" for Bryanskaya Oblast), but they are unofficial, scarse, and nonsystematic, and sometimes it's difficult to understand what exactly they mean. I think we have to restore the earlier names. Yes, we need to develop an enormous system of redirects for Russian regions, maybe a table with alternative names of the regions, but I believe that the basic article names should be the most correct and the least ambiguous possible. — Hellerick 05:43, 23 January 2009 (UTC) Federal Districts of Russia Read Wikipedia: The federal districts are a level of administration for the convenience of the federal government of the Russian Federation. They are not the constituent units of Russia. The districts are not real territorial units, they are something like territorial ministries of the federal power. They are divisions of the Russian government, not of Russia. I guess most Russians know what federal district they live in, but other than that they have vague idea of what these districts are, what are their borders, where are their "capitals" etc. With substitution of Russia category, with federal districts categories you're doing nothing but confusing people. It would be as if I divided the United States into the Census Bureau regions and divisions. — Hellerick 06:13, 23 January 2009 (UTC) Hawaii and San Diego Do you mind to explain why you chose these weird names for San Diego and Hawaii? I believe San Diego deserves to be San Diego by default (at least that's how it's treated in Wikipedia). Not to mention that I doubt that any other San Diego has a flag. And what Hawai'i, United States is supposed to mean? Do you know any other Hawaii? What the apostrophe is here for? This article is supposed to be in English, not in Hawaiian. — Hellerick 05:16, 25 January 2009 (UTC) :Oh, finally I found yet one Hawaii — it's Hawaii County. But first of all it's a nonvexi...fero... uh... I mean it does not have a flag; second, it's pretty obvious what of them is The Hawaii By Default. After all, I know at least four Luxembourgs: a grand duchy, a district in that grand duchy, a city in that distict, and a province of Belgium; but it does not mean that we have to rename Luxembourg into something like Luxembourg, European Union, right? And the city would have to be Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Luxembourg, or something? — Hellerick 10:30, 25 January 2009 (UTC) ::I have just checked Wikipedia: there is also the canton of Luxembourg! So, the city has to be Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Luxembourg (Grand duchy > District > Canton > City). Luckily the city does not have a flag, but it has a coat of arms. What a pathetic people must live there — they have no imagination! — Hellerick 10:39, 25 January 2009 (UTC) Russian interface There is a little bug in the Russian interface of the Monaco skin. Russian translation for "Special pages" (Спецстраницы) is too long, and other items of the list don't fit into the rectangualar area. Could please go to MediaWiki:Specialpages/ru and change the argument Спецстраницы to Служебные страницы? — I don't have necessary privileges for that. — Hellerick 11:58, 2 February 2009 (UTC) :Yep, it's fine now. Thanks — Hellerick 04:14, 3 February 2009 (UTC) Clickable maps Look here. Neat, huh? Such thingies could be useful. — Hellerick 16:44, 3 February 2009 (UTC) Hideable content Since you like all these fancy (and huge) templates, we'll need them to be — Hellerick 03:49, 5 February 2009 (UTC) Image deletion Hi, FlagFreak, can you delete Image:Malawi.png please? I have just uploaded a .svg version. Thanks, 15:20, 7 February 2009 (UTC) Icons They're downloadable here. -- Karsten vK (talk) 09:19, 11 February 2009 (UTC) :I can make more if necessary. : — Hellerick 11:41, 11 February 2009 (UTC) :Icons done — Hellerick 02:52, 12 February 2009 (UTC) VexiWiki:Nations by continent I have finally finished sorting out that big chart! Yay! Phew! It took me 1hr and 11mins (and that's just messing around with the chart today, it doesn't take into account all the images that I have uploaded as well) to complete that... anyway, its all sorted and finished, so I have removed the geodisclaimer thing. I thought that now I have upoaded images for all those countries, we might as well do the thing for the other continent templates? Are you OK with this? 16:01, 13 February 2009 (UTC) Award Thank you very much :) :) :) 19:56, 13 February 2009 (UTC) Fractions I have corrected the fractions template (even though I don't think that looks better than 1/6). — Hellerick 04:35, 18 February 2009 (UTC) Cape Verde, proporions. According to FOTW page different sources state different proportions, and no official document states which of them are correct. — Hellerick 16:03, 21 February 2009 (UTC) :BTW, when you change proportions, don't forget to change Category:Proportions as well. — Hellerick 16:12, 21 February 2009 (UTC) Featured article I think the current situation is counter-intuitive. I suggest to move the section with support for Puerto Rico to the section VexiWiki:DoF/Featured article/March 2009 (because it's the flag for March is discussed there), and the new active section should be VexiWiki:DoF/Featured article/April 2009 (with suggestions for April flag). BTW, it took ten minutes to find out how interlanguage links affect pages — this Languages window is barely noticeable. — Hellerick 06:48, 2 March 2009 (UTC) Featured article rotation Okay, I think I have sorted this so that it will swap each day, going in order with the eleven featured articles we've got. The only problem is that the current coding uses , which means that once we're on the 12th of March it'll go wrong. I'm sure there is some coding to say that the 12th of the month should be the same as the 1st, so in the five days I've got, I shall try to get it. Anyway, currently it is Tennessee, and will swap to Europe tomorrow (we hope). Thanks, ::The VexiWiki:Featured needs changing, and I guess so does VexiWiki:Featured articles. 07:20, 6 March 2009 (UTC) ::Are you interested in my compromise on the featured articles thing? You have just put a whole load of articles up for featured article status, so we've got easily enough articles do to the featured article weekly. My rotation thing was only added to add variety - weekly featured articles would do just as well! By the way, where on the main page are you going to have the "bad article" for people to edit. I was thinking that the "best" editor (as decided by you) could get some sort of award to put on their main page: what do you think? I hope I'm not hi-jacking the wiki with all my ideas... I seem to be having a lot of them lately! --Bethel23 (talk) 20:53, 7 March 2009 (UTC) Forum Header change Don't undo my change till I check what's wrong please. — Hellerick 01:26, 6 March 2009 (UTC) :It works fine at mine, the "Leave message" option appeared: : :— Hellerick 01:33, 6 March 2009 (UTC) Africa Day Flags of Africa are done :-) — Hellerick 05:41, 7 March 2009 (UTC) Deletion of User:Bethel23/Sig Could you please delete User:Bethle23/Sig? I have now put it into my signature thing on "My preferences". Thanks, --Bethel23 (talk) 14:13, 7 March 2009 (UTC) :Thanks. Yes it does work, I can now just put ~~~~ and it comes out as the signature. Less characters than putting ~~~~~. It looks exactly the same! --Bethel23 (talk) 17:34, 7 March 2009 (UTC) References I recently found a new wiki-code for references; thought you might want to know about it, it's very useful (I think anyway!) When putting refs instead of putting put instead where FOTW could be replaced by whatever you want. For the first time you cite this reference, put the reference info, and finish with . Now, here comes the clever part: If you want to cite the same reference again, just put , and it just comes up with the same numbered reference; very clever eh? You can see it in action on China's page. I'm just going to add that to my pages... --Bethel23 (talk) 17:51, 7 March 2009 (UTC) ::That's OK, I'm glad to share all these strange wiki commands that I discover. --Bethel23 (talk) 17:56, 7 March 2009 (UTC) Unfeatured Award image On the file on the right you can see the corner of a image that I am trying to upload. It is an Unfeatured award image. For some reason it is only coming up with the bottom right corner, whatever size I have it. I don't know why. I am using Inkscape. When I open the file in Inkscape on my computer it comes up fine as well. Also, the text box is coming up black. Any ideas? --Bethel23 (talk) 20:34, 8 March 2009 (UTC) VexiWiki:Featured articles You need to add Quebec to VexiWiki:Featured articles as well. I suggest putting March, week 1, March, week 2 etc. I would do it for you but the page is protected --Bethel23 (talk) 07:49, 9 March 2009 (UTC) St George's Cross St George's Cross should not be a redirect; it is actually the flag for the Republic of Genoa, it is the national flag of England and Georgia, the provincial flag of Huesca, Zaragoza and Teruel as well as the municipal flag for numerous cities, including Montreal, Barcelona, Almería, Milan, Genoa, Padua and Freiburg im Breisgau and, not least of all, London. Therfore, it should have it's own article. So could you remove the redirect please? Thanks, --Bethel23 (talk) 19:57, 10 March 2009 (UTC) Catsum thing Do you want that Catsum thing on all the categories? --Bethel23 (talk) 14:58, 12 March 2009 (UTC) ::Yes, it looks very nice to me. --Bethel23 (talk) 15:02, 12 March 2009 (UTC)